Tip of My Iceberg

Most of my kids, while growing up, loved to work on jigsaw puzzles. I started them on the wooden puzzles that had the picture of the piece in its space, and all they had to do was match the pieces. They graduated to the 24-piece puzzles that challenged them to figure out where the pieces fit. As they grew in age and spatial relationships, they went up to the 500 to 1,000- piece puzzles, delighting themselves in finishing a picture.

It didn’t take them long to figure out that the best way to complete a jigsaw puzzle was to find the four corners and the edge pieces and begin with the framework of the picture. Often, they’d set the box in front of them so they could see how the picture was laid out, what colors and shapes went where. As the pieces became tinier, the challenge increases to find the places where they all fit.

Everyone knows the frustration of finishing a puzzle, only to have a single piece missing. If it can’t be finished, there’s no sense of reward.

Lately, I’m discovering more and more how much my life resembles one of these intricate puzzles. I have a general framework for all that I do, but sometimes, in the midst of it all, the pieces don’t seem to fit. Like the time one of the grands combined the pieces of two different puzzles, thinking that making them together would be fun.

It doesn’t work that way. Each puzzle has its own pieces.

The truth is, we don’t know all our pieces. We don’t even have them all before us. Each day, God gives us a few more to work with, ones that may seem intuitive, and others that feel like somebody else’s puzzle.

Job in the Bible is a remarkable example of someone who didn’t see all the pieces before him. He was a wealthy and successful man who loved and obeyed God. Satan came before God and told Him the only reason Job worshiped Him was because he’d been so richly blessed. God allowed Satan to test Job’s faithfulness, and he eventually lost all his possessions, all ten of his children, and his health.

But he never cursed God.

An interesting puzzle piece.

Three of his friends came by, thinking to console him. But all they could come up with was that Job had somehow sinned against God, and God was punishing him for it.

They didn’t have all the pieces. Their theology was wrong.

They believed that his punishment was divine retribution; he received all this hardship because of something he’d done wrong. They thought all bad things that happened were a direct punishment for sin. They’d neglected to consider that bad things happen in a broken world.

Job was also concerned because he didn’t see how the puzzle pieces of his life fit. Convinced he wasn’t the horrid sinner his friends believed him to be, he interacted with the Lord.

“”Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: ‘Who is this that obscures My plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell Me, if you understand.’” Job 38:1:1-4.

The “why” that Job wanted wasn’t answered as he’d hoped. Instead, God pointed out His own massive power and authority over all things.

“‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the LORD. ‘And My ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9.

None of us has all our pieces. God alone knows all things, and all we can do is put our pieces where they need to be when He gives them to us.

We won’t get all our questions answered this side of heaven. But we can know Who has the answers to all questions.

God alone will finish our puzzles perfectly. If we let Him.